Robb Kendrick

Photograph courtesy Robb Kendrick

PUBLISHED April 25, 2016

Robb Kendrick is an award-winning, internationally recognized photographer whose work has appeared in major publications such as National Geographic and Life. Recently, Kendrick has won equal acclaim with his art photos made on metal plates, called tintypes, which are sought after by collectors and have been compiled in a celebrated book called Revealing Character.

In his career, Kendrick, a native of Spur, Texas, has traveled to more than 75 countries on assignment and has completed more than a dozen stories for National Geographic. They have included a look at the detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (April 2005) and a 32-page story on Sherpas and the 50th anniversary of the summitting of Mount Everest (May 2003). Other stories have covered such subjects as world food supply, global fishing, perfume making around the world, the cultural significance of rice, and the restoration of a historic base in Antarctica.

As much as he loves shooting with his 35mm camera, Kendrick's true passion has become wet-plate photography, a historical photo technique used during the mid-19th century. The tintype photos made with the wet-plate process are each one of a kind, as they are all handmade from start to finish. Wet-plate photos documenting working cowboys in Texas are collected in the book Revealing Character and make up a touring exhibition featured at major museums in the U.S.

Kendrick lives in San Miguel de Allende, a colonial town in central Mexico, with his wife and two sons.